He asked about the Trump case, which came to court in the former president’s case claims that he should have immunity Breyer, who is facing criminal charges for efforts to overturn the 2020 election, said he would not comment and said he did not have enough information to form an opinion.
“My God, you can be wrong about what your original thought was. Gosh, how often does that really happen,” Breyer said, adding, “I’m not just trying to get out of the question because I can get out of the question by saying I’m not going to answer the question. .”
However, Breyer, who was appointed by President Bill Clinton and served on the court from 1994 to 2022, is no stranger to evaluating cases that could have major implications for the outcome of an election in the midst of a presidential election.
In 2000, Breyer reviewed the case of Bush v. Conservation and The decision was adopted by a majority of 7-2 votes Florida’s method of recounting presidential ballots was unconstitutional. But he disagreed with the majority opinion, which concluded that Florida did not have time for a constitutional recount.
“They shouldn’t have bought it [the case] up,” Breyer told Welker. “That’s what I thought about Bush v. Gore.”
He added: “I said they must not have taken the idea. Now, after accepting this, I think they should make a different decision.” That was my idea, right? But this was an idea that was achieved after a lot of work.”
Breyer spoke to NBC News’ “Meet the Press” ahead of the release of his book, “Reading the Constitution: Why I Chose Pragmatism Over Textualism,” in which he lays out his case against the original interpretation of the Constitution.
“It’s very compelling,” Breyer said, describing the textuality as “simple.”
“Just read this. Awesome. You have the answer. Yes, just read it and it’s simple,” he said.
“You say, ‘Sounds good, sounds good.’ But in my opinion, it doesn’t work very well. And so I spent a year and a half explaining why,” Breyer added.